Our promise to you …

Happy New Year!
At PeopleAdmin, we’re excited about the opportunities a new year can bring — new innovative technology and enhancements to help simplify your job, more relevant data to aid you in making important hiring and development decisions, improved access to a highly skilled customer support team and greater insight into talent management best practices for higher education. In other words, for us a new year means another opportunity to better serve you as you focus on your academic mission and improving the lives of others.

Our continuing mission, in short, is to provide you with an Amazing Customer Experience.

At the core of that customer experience, I’m excited to unveil, is our Three-Point Promise to you — a promise that hinges on three fundamental approaches to great service: Easy, Expert and Engaged.

Easy: We promise to make it easy to do business with us, to communicate with you often and to constantly strive for efficiency.

Expert:We promise to know your business, inside and out, from the challenges you face daily to the greater mission you have before you.

Engaged: We promise to connect and engage with you as true partners, to earn your trust by continually following up and seeing things through until you are satisfied.

You will hear more about our Three-Point Promise in upcoming communications and future editions of Connections, especially about how we’re making good on our promise to you.

In the meantime, we would love for you to share your thoughts, ideas and stories of how you’ve successfully met your talent management challenges, and how we’re providing you with an Amazing Customer Experience. You can reach us at connections@peopleadmin.com.

Thank you for your partnership, and for your continued commitment to improving education and the lives of others.

Spotlight: University of Alabama at Birmingham

On a mission to help faculty succeed … and change the world one student at a time

From applicant tracking to onboarding, how talent management can support your mission

On the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s homepage, right under its school logo, are the words, Knowledge that will change your world.

According to Janice Ward, faculty affairs manager at UAB, it’s a relatively new tagline but an age-old mission at the university. “Our expectation is that every faculty member who comes on campus will bring something to the table that will change the world somehow, even in a small way, one student at a time.”

To support faculty recruitment, UAB sought a partner to provide an online environment that could automate the review process, house relevant information and allow candidates to apply online.

“We wanted a robust online applicant tracking system that could help support the success of our faculty,” Ward said. “If we can help our faculty, that will help us accomplish our mission.”

UAB, a comprehensive doctoral research university and academic medical center, studied its options and identified PeopleAdmin’s SelectSuite as a solution that could provide a positive experience for new hires and offer efficiencies through a user-friendly online portal that also enables universities to maintain compliance. They are also considering PeopleAdmin’s Onboarding module.

“Part of our strategic plan is to make sure we take certain steps to ensure success of our faculty,” Ward says. “But we also need to respond to federal requirements and guidelines. We want an efficient process to respond to those.”

At the end of the day, Ward says, it’s all about supporting UAB’s mission to advance knowledge that will change the world.

“PeopleAdmin employees (across all levels) exude professionalism and are always well poised to provide a full-service customer-centered experience. Thank you! Keep up the great work!”

— Abbie Kane, HR talent managerChapman University

“Special thanks for all that you have done to make this year great. You, the entire PeopleAdmin team, are wonderful to work with! Happy Holidays and all the best to you in the New Year!”

— Neil Jones, executive assistant to the vice president of academic affairsGeorgia College & State University

“PeopleAdmin’s SelectSuite is very user-friendly. I am in IT and participated in testing during our move from 5.8 to SelectSuite and found PeopleAdmin’s support team to be very helpful.”

— Laura Rivas, business systems analystWestern University of Health Sciences

“Premium Support is so fast. We know we can pick up the phone and somebody will help us and everything will be taken care of really quickly.”

Premium Support

“It helped to know I was talking to someone who understood where we were coming from.”

PeopleAdmin has designated 2016 the year of the Amazing Customer Experience. And a big part of that amazing experience is support.

We’re focused on delivering top-notch solutions, services and support, but because we understand some customers might need more personal attention, we also offer options such as Premium Support.

“Premium Support is so fast,” said Diana Garcia Acero, HR specialist at RiceUniversity, which has used Premium Support for the past five years. “We know we can pick up the phone and somebody will help us and everything will be taken care of really quickly.”

Premium Support is the most inclusive service package PeopleAdmin offers, and customers who choose this level of service are assigned a dedicated representative who learns their systems and workflows to provide knowledgeable, individualized and speedy service.

“The unique relationship and knowledge of the customer’s system is why Premium Support works well,” said Robin Vandeveer, senior director of customer support. She explained that customers with complex needs benefit most from Premium Support, including those with unique workflows for students, staff and faculty using the systems. “They can get personal attention from a representative who’s familiar with all those workflows every time they call. It builds a tight relationship between the service representative and the customer.”

Most Premium Support customers have weekly, bi-weekly or monthly calls with their representatives, which can become more or less frequent, depending on a university’s need.

“Our calls were weekly when we were going live on 7 from 5.8,” Diana said. “It helped to know I was talking to someone who understood where we were coming from whenever we asked for something.”

Additional benefits of Premium Support include:

Enhanced service level agreements (SLAs) where all case priorities are handled in less time. Although all PeopleAdmin customer cases are handled quickly, Premium Support customers’ cases are the most promptly resolved to meet SLA commitments.

One free PeopleConnect pass, which waives the annual conference’s registration fee for one employee — a valuable experience for anyone seeking to learn more about their product, network with peers, participate in a free ScholarLab session to discuss upcoming business or system changes, and more.

Annual site assessments to ensure the system continues to meet customer needs. This may include observations for improving efficiency, identifying unused features that would enhance performance and indicating the usage levels of applicants, postings and more.

If you’re interested in learning more about how your university can benefit from Premium Support, contact your sales representative.

Go mobile in 2016 —
just in time for recruiting season

Appalachian State: “It was a no-brainer for us.”

Looking for a New Year’s resolution that will have a big impact on your institution without costing precious time and money? Upgrade to a mobile-friendly version of your PeopleAdmin job site — it’s free, easy and available now.

“We’ve seen in our Google Analytics that up to 50 percent of visitors are using mobile devices,” said Becky Gosky, employment specialist at Appalachian State University, which transitioned to a mobile-friendly site last month. “So it was a no-brainer for us — especially since PeopleAdmin offers the upgrade for free.”

PeopleAdmin’s internal data suggest that up to 90 percent of job seekers will use a mobile device to search for a job, and 25 percent will leave a job site if it’s not mobile friendly. Sites that are mobile optimized also perform better in Google searches. So if you want to attract more talent this recruitment season, now is the time to request your upgrade.

“We can build out mobile sites in as little as a few weeks,” said Amanda Gutman, customer experience manager. “Once we have a school’s site design requirements, we can transition a university’s entire application process to mobile-friendly so the job site performs well and retains the same look and feel on any device.”

“The transition inspired us to evaluate and streamline our site to make it look less busy,” Becky said. “Now our site is relevant and fresh, with pictures and a color scheme to match our University’s website brand.

Appalachian State University’s main site went mobile-friendly at the same time, and this aligned with our social media goals and our desire to make the site easier to navigate. It was perfect timing.”

Reader feedback: Community tips and updates

“I would love it if the newsletter noted the different updates/releases.”

At PeopleAdmin, we welcome your comments, feedback and requests because it helps us identify opportunities to serve you better.

After reading last month’s newsletter, Kristen Taylor, employee recruitment and HRIS coordinator at Lincoln Land Community College, wrote:

“I love getting a newsletter because I don’t have time to visit the Community site. I would love it if the newsletter noted the different updates/releases that were made because I never get notified otherwise and I know I am missing out on pertinent information because of it. It would also be nice if the newsletter had tips or notices about the Community.”

Thanks for the feedback, Kristen! In December, we released minor SelectSuite upgrades that affected Administration, Applicant Tracking, Position Management and Performance Management. You can read about them here.

To make sure you’re always aware of the latest product information, you can set your Community preferences to receive an email notification when information about your product is posted to the Community.

“By joining a Community user group and turning on email notifications, you’ll get email notifications of user group posts, including product updates,” said Courtney Langdon, Community forum moderator. “For Kristen and many other customers, I recommend joining the SelectSuite user group to receive product updates and announcements.”

To join a user group, follow these steps:

Log in to the Community

Click on the “User Group” tab

On the left, under your picture and name, click “Groups”

Next, click “Active Groups” on the left

If you know the name of the group you want to join, type it in the “Type a Group Name” box and allow the page to refresh

If you don’t know the name of the group, scroll through the list to browse existing groups. There are industry groups, regional groups, product groups and company groups, i.e., Higher Education, SelectSuite California, Version 5.8 and PeopleConnect

Once you have found the group you wish to join, click “Join” under the Membership column. Note: Groups that say “Request to Join” instead of “Join” are private groups that require approval from the administrator. Guidelines for acceptance into a private group are listed in the group description

Next, set your email preferences to get notified of new posts:

Click your name on the top right of the page

Select “My Settings”

Click “Email Notifications”

Scroll down to the Groups section, and select your preferred email frequency

Click save

By following these steps, you’ll opt-in to email notifications from the groups that matter most to you, and ensure you don’t miss a product update, release notice or other pertinent information.

“Micro-Messages & Your Search Committees – Subtle Signals that Can Help or Hinder the Recruitment of Women and Minorities,” hosted by the Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC) in partnership with PeopleAdmin, will show you how first impressions and unspoken signals can lead to diversity recruiting success.

Congratulations to our new class of SelectSuite Certified Administrators (SSCA) — PeopleAdmin’s educational program designed to help customers become SelectSuite experts.

“SSCA equips our customers with in-depth product knowledge and the know-how it takes to make a strategic impact on their institution using the SelectSuite product,” said Kay Larson, enrichment services manager. “This eight-week course places our customers in a unique category as a PeopleAdmin partner and an expert SelectSuite user. We launched a new class on Jan. 12 and customers have already begun to see the benefits of participating.”

Compiling, tracking, and reporting on faculty via paper processes is never ideal. But for many institutions, it feels like the only option for institutions. Going digital is a process and requires planning and effort. The long-term benefit though is a simplified entry point, a self-sufficient system, API integrations and a simple and accessible platform for all parties from IT to faculty and staff.

It was wonderful to host and connect with our customers at PeopleConnect 2019. If you joined us in Austin, thank you! If you missed the conference, we had a great three days with 250 higher education peers who came together to learn, network, and share new and exciting opportunities to advance the missions of research, teaching, and service. They made our annual customer event a huge success!

Advancing the higher education ecosystem is a challenge faced by administrators and educators all over the world. Higher education institutions today are responsible for many critical outcomes. In addition to student success, there is a renewed focus on the recruitment and retention of faculty, as well as the setup and administration of organizational systems powering human capital management.
These pressures in higher education create dysfunctional systems and processes causing a mission gap and lack of alignment among teams, leadership, and the overall institution.